


The Drumhead - Drake's Venture

by shimere277



Category: Drake's Venture (1980)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-18
Updated: 2013-11-18
Packaged: 2018-01-01 23:09:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1049678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shimere277/pseuds/shimere277





	The Drumhead - Drake's Venture

**Written for the ninebillion challenge on LJ with the following prompts** :  
35\. "When a change comes, some species feel the urge to migrate, they call it zugunruhe. "A pull of the soul to a far off place," following a scent in the wind, a star in the sky. The ancient message comes calling the kindred to take flight and gather together. Only then they can hope to survive the cruel season to come. "  
36\. "You do not choose your destiny, it chooses you. And those that knew you before Fate took you by the hand cannot understand the depth of the changes inside. They cannot fathom how much you stand to lose in failure...that you are the instrument of flawless Design. And all of life may hang in the balance. The hero learns quickly who can comprehend and who merely stands in your way."  
61\. "Faith isn't faith until it's all you're holding on to."  
45\. "I'll kill you if I have to...but speaking as someone who just got back from there, you really don't want to go."  
 **Word Count** : 5031  
 **Summary** : Prophecy and destiny converge on a beach in Patagonia.

 

**I. The Cruel Season**

_"When a change comes, some species feel the urge to migrate, they call it zugunruhe. "A pull of the soul to a far off place," following a scent in the wind, a star in the sky. The ancient message comes calling the kindred to take flight and gather together. Only then they can hope to survive the cruel season to come. "_

 

 

            “Do you see it?” asked Doctor Dee, pulling the curtain aside from the window.  Secretary Walsingham flinched at the sight of the disturbing heavenly apparition, but the Queen stood, following Dee’s gesture with her curious gaze.  “Does it frighten you?”

“What does it mean?” she asked.

            “Yon blazing star is the herald, the forerunner of the fiery trigon.  It portends the cruel season to come, your highness.  There will be war, endless war.”

            “With Spain?”

            “On Earth, and in Heaven.  So say the angels.  And so do the tales of eld.”

            “You don’t really believe that,” she said, leaning to stroke the dog in her lap.  “Those old legends you always speak of.  Bran the Blessed.  Albion.”

            “The White Hill.  Aye.  The old dragon stirs beneath it.  And there is but one thing that will satisfy his hunger.  It is called the entertainment of the noble head.”

            “How quaint.  Really, Doctor…”

            “It is not.  Britain’s empire will be founded, and it will be bought in blood.”

            “Many things are,” said Good Queen Bess, raising her eyes to look straight at the comet, whose red gash seemed to split the night in half.

            “Your majesty!” Walsingham stepped forward in alarm.  The Queen smiled.  They were so timid, these Puritans, when faced with the unknown.  She greatly doubted that anything could be worse than what he had already experienced, watching the Seine run red with blood on St. Bartholomew’s day those years ago.  And then she smiled at Dee.  Hadn’t the cruel season already begun?

            “ _Lacta est alea_.  I’m not afraid of it,” she said to her learned astrologer.  “If it really is destiny, what would be the point?”

 

            The next morning, the queen sent her messenger to an anxious captain awaiting her pleasure in PlymouthHarbor.  He opened the letter eagerly, but shook his head as he read.  The letter was ambiguous, always ambiguous.  She would never set out to do what could not be undone.  _How very like a woman_ , he thought.

            But he considered himself to be a man among men.  “Go forward!” he cried, and all those he commanded scattered at his fiat.  All save one, but then again, Captain General Francis Drake had never commanded that man, the gentleman Thomas Doughtie.  That knowledge came as a sudden realization, an anchor dropping into the pit of his stomach even as his good friend ran to embrace him, saying, “Then said they among the heathen, ‘The Lord hath done great things for us.’”

            Drake tried to force a smile as Doughtie spun him around.  This was what they had planned for, hoped for all of those years.  Then why did he have this sudden feeling of dread?

            “The Lord done great things for us already, whereof we rejoice,” he replied.

 

            Drake had always known that his friend would accompany him on this venture, despite the folly, the uselessness of such a journey to Doughtie’s advancement.  The gentleman had been Christopher Hatton’s secretary just over a year.  Rumor had it that Hatton was to be knighted, made a member of the Privy Council.  Surely, if Doughtie wanted preferment, the best place for him was at his master’s side, not on a ship bound for the very bottom of the world, an instrument of the Queen’s undeclared war and of Drake’s private vendetta, a voyage tainted with the stain of piracy.

            But then again, why had Doughtie left his legal studies at the InnerTemple to follow Essex into the hellhole that was Ireland?  Drake would never understand this, at least, not in a way he could articulate.  Later, much later, Doughtie would know the answer to that particular question: to follow the footsteps of Bendigeid Vran, Bran the Blessed.  But four years ago, when he had departed English shores on that ship bound for Antrim, he attributed it to his restless nature, to an instinctive tug at his heart, the heart of a migratory bird.  It was the same reason he had enthusiastically agreed to go with Drake to the Perwe.

            Drake saw it in him from the first, saw it and loved him for it.  Those eyes that weren’t satisfied with anything, those eyes that always had their gaze on something beyond.  They were kindred, twins of the spirit.  In other ways they complimented each other, poised in opposition, the democratic gentleman and the dictatorial upstart.  In this, however, they were cut from the same material.

            Drake had a secret: he didn’t really like the sea.  In fact, he feared it, the vast immensity of it.  It made him summon up all his will, like a spearhead, like a comet, to fling himself against it.  It made him rage against his fear, made him determined to have control at all cost.  Later, much later, he would plead in vain upon his deathbed for his body to be taken home, buried on friendly shores.  The thought that he should sink forever into the sea, finally losing the battle he had fought his whole life, was anathema to him.

            On land, Francis Drake was a different man, charismatic, gracious, even amusing.  But he could never stay long on land.  He could never stay long anywhere, that was the truth of it.  His soul clawed at him like a cat in a burlap sack, like a dragon whose wings had been clipped.

            Doughtie, on the other hand, was exactly the same at sea or ashore.  He could smile and fawn and plot and intrigue, he could love and hate with passion, he could indulge himself in all the delights of the senses, and yet it was all show, a series of masks.  The eyes behind it were hooded, the restless eyes of a kept bird who sings and preens, pretending not to watch for the least sign of movement of a hand towards a cage door, ready to dart for an opening upon the instant.

            Drake looked at Doughtie and thought he saw another soul who had felt the ancient call in his restless bones, another grounded creature who would fly across the face of the Earth because he could not fly across the skies.  Doughtie looked at Drake and saw the keeper of the key that unlocks the cage, and so he would agree to this insane plan, following Drake in the surety that his aching soul would soon be satisfied.  They were not wrong - but the manner of that fulfillment would come as somewhat of a shock to both of them.

 

 

            **II.  The Dragon’s Destiny**

_"You do not choose your destiny, it chooses you. And those that knew you before Fate took you by the hand cannot understand the depth of the changes inside. They cannot fathom how much you stand to lose in failure...that you are the instrument of flawless Design. And all of life may hang in the balance. The hero learns quickly who can comprehend and who merely stands in your way."_

 

            To his chagrin, Drake would find that Thomas Doughtie stood in the way.

            But before we get to that, flashback to Tavistock, some thirty-three years earlier.  On the day that Thomas Doughtie was born, Edmund Drake left home, never to return.  In his mind, whenever Francis Drake pictured God, he pictured his father, that is to say, absent.  In their places stood a sense of unerring destiny, a compass pointing in the direction of something missing and essential, the rhythm of a drum pounding through his bloodstream.  In the fashion of the people of his day, Drake was religious, and so he called this preternatural certainty ‘The Will of God.’

            One day, he sent a merchant’s son home in tears after a good drubbing.  “We played at war, and I was commander,” he said defiantly to his kinsman, John Hawkins.  “He was insubordinate.”

            “His father is moneyed, and thou art but a ship’s boy out of the Medway.  Remember thyself, Francis.”

            “I do,” Drake said, looking older than his dozen years.  Sometimes Hawkins wondered what sort of elemental creature his cousin had sent him to raise.  The boy seemed driven by forces the seaman could not pretend to understand.  Young Francis might well be a ship’s boy out of the Medway, but he held himself like a king.  There was nothing to do for it but send the lad to sea as often as possible, hoping maritime discipline would break his unruly spirit.

            If anything, the opposite happened.  Drake learned to give orders while making it look like he was taking them.  His first voyage out, a trading venture, bore the typical stamp of a Hawkins’ expedition – it didn’t matter whether the cargo was bought or stolen.  The appearance of a Spanish ship on the horizon sent thrills through his young body – here was something that interested him far more than the business of adjusting the sails.  “If we raise the flag of Spain, we may catch our enemy unawares,” he said, shocking his captain.

            “Such behavior is treachery, boy, unworthy of an Englishman.”

            “As you say, sir.  But if we sail for God and Queen, how can actions taken against an enemy be treason?”  To Drake, this logic was immutable.  It was then that he intuited that patriotism and religion were much the same thing – justifications so beautiful and useful that surely they must be signs from God.

            But the captain had his honor; the Spaniard had a cannonball.  The master, Lovell, a working-class man,  proved to be more pragmatic when he assumed command of the ship upon the captain’s untimely demise.  Drake’s ruse, and others like it, became the standard means of operation in the little fleet.

            And as for John Hawkins, he was a businessman with a nose for profit.  “Your nephew proves to be a clever tactician,” reported Lovell upon his return to Plymouth.

            “Aye,” said Hawkins, looking at Drake, whose eyes respectfully gazed at the floor.  _The lad is insolent even in humility_ , he thought.

            Still, Drake was rewarded with a share of the considerable take.  Suddenly, he was no longer a ship’s boy.  People treated him like a gentleman, even though he wasn’t.  From this he learned a lesson.  Money was power – it opened doors, made excuses for a man’s behavior.  And although it was a platitude that money was the root of all evil, those who sought to do the work of God without ready capital had a name: martyrs.  Despite his professed faith, Drake held martyrs in contempt.  Suitable for a woman perhaps, but unmanly to give in without a fight.  He hated the Spanish with their books of saints, with their martyrdom paintings, especially the pious sufferings of Sebastian.  He knew his own destiny was more robust: struggle – and conquest.

            There would be those who called Drake greedy, but that wasn’t quite so.  Men who love money hold onto it, but Drake poured it like water.  On land, it had a way of washing away all obstacles.  But at sea, faced with the immense blue expanse, it was swallowed by the relentless waves.  Other tactics were necessary.

            Drake was adaptable.  He was rigid, his methods were flexible, and anything which brought him closer to his undefined goal was acceptable.  He learned other things from Hawkins: people were plunder, too.  It wasn’t just the slaves Hawkins took from the Portuguese as readily as he took gold.  He never set free the pilot of a captured ship, at least not until he had been plumbed for information.  Although Lovell’s homilies  reinforced the kind of fanatical piety expected from a minister’s son, Hawkins taught Drake the advantages of a certain flexibility in action, if not belief.  However, Drake would never go so far as to emulate his mentor’s pretense of Catholicism when it meant cutting a deal with papist clients.  Perhaps this honesty came more from blind hatred of Catholics than from fear of God.  At the root, Drake was certain that whatever resources which came his way, including his own ideas, were meant to be employed in the fulfillment of his destiny.  How could God begrudge that which he had given?

            And Drake’s subterfuge was a natural sort of genius.  In this, Captain Lovell was eager to be schooled by his subordinate.  In 1567, Lovell arrived at Rio de la Hacha with a full cargo, only to find that the situation was radically different from the year previous.  “We cannot trade with pirates,” lamented the local commander, Miguel de Castellanos.  “The crown strictly enforces this edict.”

            In retribution, Lovell did a seemingly insane thing.  He lay siege to the harbor, firing the canon wildly, wasting gunpowder, missing the target more often than not.  These rash tactics had an inevitable conclusion, and a few days later the English fleet  gave up in futility, abandoning 96 “sick and weak” slaves upon the shore before sailing away.

            What could Castellanos do but take in the starving slaves?  “A most satisfactory arrangement,” said Lovell, counting the money that had been paid previously, in secret.

            “I knew it would work,” Drake replied.  “From henceforth, let us feign to take by force all who would trade with us, removing them of their silver, and dispatching them to freedom in the company of  ‘unwanted prisoners.’”

            Drake returned home to find news of his father at last: Edmund Drake had passed away, leaving his estate to his youngest son, Thomas, and his live-in nursemaid, Jone Justis.  Francis Drake went unmentioned in the will – which was not uncommon for an older son, already established in the world.  Still, there might have been something, a keepsake, a _memento mori_.  Drake’s mother also went unmentioned, saving an admonition to Thomas Drake to inscribe her name in the family Bible.

            If all this rankled, Drake did not show it.  He was soon to receive something far, far better: command of his first ship.  He took it as a sign, understanding exactly the words which God was speaking to the old dragon stirring in the bottom of his soul: _go forward_.

 

 

            **III.  The Entertainment of the Noble Head.**

            " _Faith isn't faith until it's all you're holding on to."_

 

 

            Ambrose Herne, his own chest heavy with grief, desperately wanted to drive away from the graveyard without looking back.  But he did not give the order to the coachman, his eyes fixed instead on the lone form of his son-in-law, standing in the rain long after the other mourners had gone.  He had never known what to make of Thomas Doughtie, a man a little more well-bred, well-educated, well-placed, more beautiful than his daughter could have realistically anticipated, and so, despite his enthusiastic agreement to the marriage, he always half-expected the other shoe to drop.  He had, after all, heard the rumors.  Even an innkeeper knew the meaning of “Italianate.”

            Herne never expected the anticipated disaster would turn out to be his daughter’s death, some three months after the nuptials.  At the wake, Thomas was ashen, rigid, as if every step forward broke open a new stigmata.  “It is God’s Will,” he said in a half-whisper, closing his eyes.

            _Then God is no better than the Fiend himself_ , thought Herne, remembering the tumbling waterfall of lace as his daughter rushed down the stair, face flushed, to greet her paramour.  Whatever he was, Doughtie had made her happy, Doughtie had treated her well and with honor.  Whatever he was, Doughtie’s grief could not be feigned.

            “I still consider thee as a son,” said Herne, resting a sympathetic hand on Doughtie’s shoulder.  He knew that Doughtie’s own parents were long deceased.  “You are always welcome at my table.”

            “I am grateful for thy concern, good Father,” said Doughtie.  “But soon I go to sea.”  This took Herne by surprise – Dorcase had never mentioned it.  He doubted that she would have stood for it.  But Doughtie continued, “My very good friend Captain Francis Drake hath long pressed me to aid him in his endeavor, but I thought it not meet for a wedded man to so long leave the source of his joy.”  Doughtie was silent for a moment.  “In light of present circumstance, mayhap this call is a summoning.”

            In the comfort of his carriage, Herne shuddered to think upon those words.  In his eyes, Doughtie’s departure was as precipitous – and as final – as his daughter’s.  In the downpour, Doughtie maintained a particular sodden dignity.  Despite what was to come, despite whatever men would say of him in the future, this was how Herne would remember him – surrounded by tears, by rain, by ocean, drowning in water and salt, a stiff marionette whose head and shoulders were pulled tautly upward by the strings of faith extending towards heaven.  But Herne was neither a theologian nor a puppeteer – he had little taste for such metaphors and more for the thick stew his cook was serving tonight at his inn.  He gave the coachman the signal and drove home to the warm hearth of the living.

 

            Thomas Doughtie was certain, watching the dirt fall onto that grave, that he knew what it was like to lose everything.  Standing on the beach of San Julian, a little over a year later, he realized what a fool he had been.  Since then, he had lost his authority.  He had lost the promise of making a fortune.  He had lost the potential of a great future – all his talents, his gifts, his beauty – wasted.  He had lost his pride, being half-starved, hoisted by force into a prison ship, forced to sleep on the floor with the common sailors, tied to the mast for two days straight until he could not help but soil his fine clothing.  He was about to lose his life, and worse, it was likely that when the fleet returned home, he would lose his good name, sullied forever by Ned Bright’s false testimony that he was a mutineer, a traitor, a black magician.  And yet it was not until Francis Drake, the man he had once believed to be the true and eternal companion of his restless soul, refused to meet his eyes as the jury deliberated his guilt that he knew his loss was complete.

            Chaplain Fletcher came to hear his last confession, but what was there to confess?  He was no traitor, his magicks had caused no harm to anyone.  He had been human, his sins were the sins of all mankind.  God would forgive him, of that he was certain.  God would recognize his innocence.  At that moment, it was more important that Drake forgave him, even if Drake could never understand the forces of pride, honor and circumstance which had torn their friendship apart.  “Would you take communion with me?” he asked.

            Now Drake had to look at Doughtie.  The man he saw was small, afraid, all the arrogance of his breeding washed away.  Yet there was still something there, those invisible strings holding the broken doll in a gentleman’s pose, a self-possessed dignity, a faith as strong as Drake’s own sense of destiny.  It was then he understood this was the meaning of martyrdom, this and not the pious histrionics of paintings.  It came to him suddenly how much he had loved this man.  “Is that what you wish?”

            “It is.”

            “Then I shall.  Most gladly and humbly.”

            Doughtie loved the ritual.  It was achingly real to him even though his firm Protestant faith declared the sacrament to be symbol and naught else.  But there was the matter of the doctrine taught to him by father and preacher, and then there was the reality of his own nature.  He had the heart of a magician, and for the conjuror, the miracle of  transubstantiation was simple as sleight of hand.  The bread, the wine was in his mouth, the passion was no longer a story, a metaphor, but lived in his flesh: _Let this cup pass from me,_ and also _Why hast thou forsaken me?_   He was not certain whether his prayer addressed God or Captain General Francis Drake.  In his moment of despair, he felt the strings cut, one by one.  There was nothing left to keep him upright.

            He felt a moment of vertigo when he thought he would crumple onto the ground, feared that he would weep, beg for his life, but then it seemed as though he was rising, lighter than air.  He had lost every _thing_ , but what did it matter?  Something remained, something which could not be taken from him.  Unencumbered, he could now see the bars of the cage beyond the gilded trappings, could see the light of the sunrise beyond it, could see the key in the shape of an axe.  He was to be free, he was going home.

            It was important to Francis Drake that no ceremony should be spared in the dispatch of this, his closest friend, the only friend he would ever have.  Doughtie had stood in the way of his destiny – for whatever reason – and so Doughtie had to be sacrificed to the call of the sea, the pull of the compass needle, the beat of the drum, the restless migration of birds.  It was God’s Will.  But Drake had loved this man, loved Doughtie in heart and soul, as he would profess in the most effusive terms for the rest of his life, loved Doughtie in body although he never dared say it out loud.  Doughtie’s last meal would be a banquet befitting a gentleman of stature.  Doughtie’s last meal would be a love-poem written by Drake.

            Doughtie saw it differently.  It was a going-away party, and if he did not have forty years to celebrate, like Bran the Blessed in the stories that Doctor Dee used to tell him, he still intended to dispense felicity amongst the company.  He made such good cheer, such merry wit, that all who saw spoke of it for years to come.  He prayed with fervor, in the sure knowledge that his good words would carry the especial weight of sainthood.

            He took Drake aside, to speak in private.  “I will always love thee, my good captain,” he said.  “I will be ever by thy side.”

            As was customary, the body of the traitor was buried headless.  Drake never spoke of how he disposed of the head, but thereafter his eyes were haunted, and his drum, the pounding rhythm of his destiny, fell silent.

 

 

           **IV. The Fourth Goodly Concealment**

            _"I'll kill you if I have to...but speaking as someone who just got back from there, you really don't want to go."_

 

 

The survivors spoke for years of the screams of the doomed as the _Marigold_ went down in the Straits of Magellan, spoke of the screams of the perjurer Ned Bright.  They spoke of the sudden cowardice of the mariners on the _Elizabeth,_ who turned tail when faced with the wild weather - although they had refused to return home bearing Doughtie as a prisoner, when it meant that his life could have been spared.  They spoke of the 40 days and 40 nights of storm which rocked the newly christened _Golden Hinde_ , blowing it South past Cape Horn, so far off course that the sailors thought they were to perish in a hell made of ice, and all the while, Fletcher howling to the winds about the vengeance of God for the murder of the innocent gentleman Thomas Doughtie.

              The _Hinde_ , the lone ship left in the fleet, finally found safe harbor.  At least, it should have been a safe harbor.  The inhabitants of Mocha were supposed to be friendly.  Had Drake known more about local legend, he would also have known that the island was considered to be the paradise inhabited by the souls of the dead.

            Quite against his will, Great Nele the Dane was to make it his permanent home.  Drake almost did as well.  His men carried him back to the ship with an arrow lodged just beneath the right eye.  He would bear the scar for the rest of his life.

           

            There was too much light in his cabin.  Drake could no longer see anything.  The light came in splinters, pushing itself like needles under his skin.

            In fact, his right eye was too swollen to see, and yet before it a vision appeared, a vision of the oracular head of Thomas Doughtie, floating above the drum where Drake had concealed it in a fit of insane whimsy.  Surely, it would soon decay, befouling the ship – and yet it had not.

            “’Tis thee,” Drake muttered feverishly.  “Still with us.  I knew it to be so.  Hast come for thy vengeance?  Hast come to slay me, Thomas?”

            “I shall take thee to accompany me, if it be thy will.  But I think it not to thy liking,” Doughtie said, his bodiless head shaking from side to side.  “In sooth, it is my intent to convince thee to stay yet in thy mortal coil.  There is still thy destiny to fulfill.  The dragon stretches itself out upon the face of the water.  Soon, it will swallow its own tail.”

            “Dee’s Britannia,” said Drake, dreamily.  “An empire to last forever.”

            “Hardly.  Sooner or later, the dragon will have to let go.”  Doughtie smiled, his voice thick with distant ecstasy.  “Letting go is the very heart of the matter.”

            Drake winced as the light, annoyingly, increased.

            “But softly, Francis.  There is not much time for me to say what I must.  The purport of all which has happened is now clear to me.  El Draco, the dragon of Britain, the same dragon which portended the birth of Arthur.  And myself - Thomas.  Do you know the substance of the name?”

            “Doubting Thomas.”

            “It means brother - twin.”

            “Is’t of import?”

            “There are always twins.  One is destined to become immortal.  The other is to be sacrificed.  The pattern is e’er the same.  The sacrifice must needs be reviled, falsely accused, the head removed from the body, lifted into the air, to the sun, one with the sun.  Then it is hidden, buried under the foundation of the empire, to protect forever from invasion.”

            Drake laughed.  “Thy head is yet unburied, as thou must know.  The rest of thy corpse lies beneath a millstone, along with the dead men Oliver and Winterhey.  Fletcher carved your names on that stone, carved it plain so that men might remember the lesson.”

            “Aye,” said Doughtie.  “But no one will ever find it.  There will come a time when a barbarous King of the Huns, a man called Hitler, will disgorge the coast of Patagonia entire in search of that grave so that the fall of England might be assured.  If thou dost succeed, he will fail.  And here is thy task: so that the ravens not be driven from the Tower, thou must complete the fourth goodly concealment, and bury my head beneath, to take the place of Bran the Blessed.  And thou must also fulfill thy destiny as well as mine, the reach of the dragon, the circumnavigation of the globe.”

            “Circumnavigation?  Prating knave.  Now I am certain thou art mad, or a demon sent to torment me.”

            “Not at all.  Wilt thou return through Magellan, and face again those storms, as well as the waiting Spaniard?  What if I give thee a sign?”

            “What sign?”

            “Let success be thy proof.  From henceforth shall the dragon have treasure, the silver ship for the _Golden Hinde_.  Only do as I say and all thy dreams shall be realized.”

            “Circumnavigation,” Drake repeated, the word heavy as a lead coffin upon his lips.  “And what of the Straits of Anian?”

            “Doctor Dee was correct in most things – but not all.  The Straits of Anian are but his folly.”

            “And how shall I traverse the Pacific with no navigator?  Da Silva will be of no aid.”

            “I shall guide thee, Francis.  As I promised, I shall be with thee forever, for we are twins.”

            “I understand not at all.  Why aid me now?  Why, when thou didst oppose me sore upon the Atlantic, then didst curse this venture with naught but trouble since the day of thy death?”

            “Wert deaf to my words of benediction ‘pon the occasion of my execution?  ‘Tis not I who have cursed this voyage.  ‘Tis thee.”

            Drake laughed, a bitter, hacking laugh like a death rattle.  “I?”

            “The blood guilt on thy hands, Francis.  Thou didst love me well.”

            For a moment, Drake could almost see through the merciless light, see an image of two young men sitting in a field in Ireland, sharing their hearts.  “I did,” he said.  “Thomas, what shall I do?”

            “Go forward,” said the floating head of Thomas Doughtie, kissing Drake on the forehead.  “I forgave thee at St. Julian’s Bay.  “Tis time for thee to forgive thyself.”

            “Thomas…”

            “Thou spake rightly, Francis.  I was still with thee.  I always shall be.  And at the end, we shall be reunited, my other self, my twin.  That next time, the banquet will be from my purse.  The Entertainment of the Noble Head.  I swear to serve a dish more seemly than roast penguin.”  At this, Drake had to laugh.  “So let go of it, Francis.  Let go of thy guilt, of thy grief.  All we strive for is as nothing.  It is the greatest of blessings, for nothing is ever lost.”

            “I know not in hell of that which thou speakest.,” Drake said gruffly, tiredly.  His right eye throbbed, and his good eye felt raw, as if blasted with salt spray.  Suddenly he realized he was crying.

            “There will come a time when my words come clear to thee.  It will be on a day when sight of the light no longer brings pain.  Now do as I ask, do as thy God demands of thee, Francis Drake.  Go home.  I have.”

 

           

 


End file.
